141–150 of 376 posts
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You can be passionate and arrogant.
He didn't seem arrogant to me from the Lex podcasts. He seems to have no problem admitting when he doesn't know something or when he was wrong. Maybe his overuse of the "I" pronoun gives the wrong impression?
It's interesting with the sycophant outrage over criticism of Wolfram. With arguments ala "criticise his work not his person". But if you actually follow his work (scientific work, not his business) it is clear that there is a lot to critique, but not in a useful sense. Scholarly reviews of A New Kind of Science were universally negative. The usefulness of what he proposes is doubtful and it is unoriginal. He is unab…
I think Wolfram is a victim of his own success. His achievements in software have let him avoid the necessary humility in being an academic.
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He didn't seem arrogant to me from the Lex podcasts. He seems to have no problem admitting when he doesn't know something or when he was wrong. Maybe his overuse of the "I" pronoun gives the wrong impression?
More the overuse of his name to name other things and the fact he has been talking about revolutioning science for at least 2 facades without doing it.
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I think it's a good thing to have a small percentage of scientists working on whacky theories, one of them might turn out to be true.
Plus it's not like Wolfram is taking resources away from other scientists as he is funded from his company. If Wolfram wasn't doing this he'd be CEO'ing his company, there's no cost to the public for Wolfram exploring this and potentially huge gains - though unlikely.
I used Wolfram Alpha a lot while I was in college and liked it a lot. So I am surprised to see the hatred toward this man in the comments. Can anyone enlighten me why he is delusional and why he has lost it?
Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. I don’t mind criticisms of my favorite thinkers. I enjoy watching someone being taken to task in the battle of ideas so to speak, but apparently something about Wolfram just rubs people the wrong way, because they seem to lose the ability to make cogent arguments after reading him. As a simple example of what a healthy di…
Well this blog article is crackpot science. It doesn't matter that Wolfram created Mathematica or that he was a good scientist before. There are many examples of good scientists, even Nobel prizes, that became crackpot scientists. Science simply doesn't work like that.
Whether it will prove useful like the above models still remains to be seen, but calling it "not science" seems ahistoric. Let's see if they can evolve the theory to the point where it can make novel predictions. If it never makes one, then the model is not useful. If it makes one but is proven wrong, then at least it will be wrong (rather than "not even wrong"). If it makes one and is proven right, then we will have made a big leap forward in our understanding of the universe.
I'm ok with either of these outcomes, but I don't get why anyone would want this thought experiment stopped before one of them is reached.
Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. I don’t mind criticisms of my favorite thinkers. I enjoy watching someone being taken to task in the battle of ideas so to speak, but apparently something about Wolfram just rubs people the wrong way, because they seem to lose the ability to make cogent arguments after reading him. As a simple example of what a healthy di…
Case in point: Yesterday he streamed a "History of Science and Technology Q&A" session. [1] Is it about the history of science and technology? No! It's a sales pitch for his new institute! As if he is the singularity that all of science and technology have culminated in. So obviously when talking about history of science and technology all you need to talk about is cellular automata and Stephen Wolfram's role in it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMFxPWzVU8
Watch it, it's enlightening.
Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. I don’t mind criticisms of my favorite thinkers. I enjoy watching someone being taken to task in the battle of ideas so to speak, but apparently something about Wolfram just rubs people the wrong way, because they seem to lose the ability to make cogent arguments after reading him. As a simple example of what a healthy di…
I studied physics in my undergrad, I have a graduate degree in math, I've shipped large features on planet-scale systems. I'm no genius, certainly nowhere close to Dr. Wolfram, but I don't think I'm far from your average HN reader in reading comprehension ability.
I've read 35 paragraphs in a post about founding a research institute and I don't know what was said there that couldn't have been conveyed in two or three paragraphs instead.
It is my default opinion that people who use lot word when few word do trick do so to cover up the fact that they have very little content of actual value. That might not be the case with Wolfram, who has quite a track record, but to me the burden of proof is still on him.
Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. I don’t mind criticisms of my favorite thinkers. I enjoy watching someone being taken to task in the battle of ideas so to speak, but apparently something about Wolfram just rubs people the wrong way, because they seem to lose the ability to make cogent arguments after reading him. As a simple example of what a healthy di…
> show where it’s wrong Do you know the expression "not even wrong"?
Long story short, I don't see why being "not even wrong" at this phase is some great sin.
Man these are some low-quality comments. You’d think Wolfram was torturing gerbils or something. I don’t mind criticisms of my favorite thinkers. I enjoy watching someone being taken to task in the battle of ideas so to speak, but apparently something about Wolfram just rubs people the wrong way, because they seem to lose the ability to make cogent arguments after reading him. As a simple example of what a healthy di…
The web/media representation of Stephen Wolfram somehow seems (I never had a chance to know him personally so I have no idea if he even creates such an impression, let alone actually does) like he has a "huge ego". Whenever someone produces such an impression (which can often be an unfortunate coincidence, I wouldn't expect popular ideas about people to be reliably related to their actual characters), "egos" of all t…
He was very kind, humble and approachable.
So very much smarter than I'll ever be, yet I never once got the feeling he was looking down on me.